Don't Ask, Don't Tell: The Policy of Fear

As the House approaches a vote on DADT, out comes Marine General James Amos with the real reason he opposes repeal:

When your life hangs on a line, on the intuitive behavior of the young man ... who sits to your right and your left, you don't want anything distracting you. I don't want to lose any Marines to distraction. I don't want to have any Marines that I'm visiting at Bethesda with no legs be the result of any type of distraction.

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It's worth noting several things here. One is that the man in charge of America' s frontline military force holds a view of gays rejected by 77 percent of the American public — including a majority of Republicans, conservatives, and evangelical Protestants. There are limits and exceptions, but in general the nation is best served by military leaders who reflect its values. The Commandant of the Marine Corps does not.

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Second is that, as has not been pointed out enough in the DADT debate, the homophobia used as an excuse to oppose repeal belongs to Amos — and, more broadly, the leadership — not to the troops. Amos is literally projecting his own fears onto those of an imaginary Marine in an imaginary situation. Among living, breathing combat-unit Marines who took the DADT survey, 84 percent said that units in which they had served with someone they believed to be gay had "good" or "neutral" ability to work together.

Third: what an extraordinary imagination this man has. It makes plain that his homophobia is not just ingrained but pathological: It takes a disturbed mind to believe that anyone under direct hostile fire will be most concerned not with avoiding death, but with whether Sergeant Jones is taking advantage of the tight foxhole quarters to get a long look at PFC Smith's ass. (Tellingly, when pressed to explain exactly how openly gay troops might endanger lives, Amos had no answer. Imagination has its limits — and logic defies his fears.)

Fourth and finally, and this remains true even if you reject the rest of this analysis, the reason that homosexuality can be feared as "a distraction" is that it remains, to many people, an unknown — a fact amplified among troops by DADT. Unknown, it becomes feared, projected onto, fantasized into nightmare forms — much like blackness once was in this country, and femaleness. In both cases the military, after initial resistance, took the lead and forced the unknown to become known. It desegregated itself, and it let women serve as equals. And the result was entirely positive, not just for the military but, as troops reentered civilian life, for the nation as a whole.

So it is simply shameful that decades later, Amos and other military leaders are citing their own fears in defense of legalized discrimination by the iconic American institution. This is not caution. It is cowardice — a character truly unfit to serve.